


Until We've Got Nothing Left

by psuedo118



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:13:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3135761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psuedo118/pseuds/psuedo118
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following on from the events of 4x11. The scene in the elevator, as Root grieves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until We've Got Nothing Left

Tight arms wrap themselves around her as she falls to the floor. Collapsing.

She can’t breathe.  
She’s numb.  
As empty as the static that fills her ear.  
She a corrupted file that can’t be accessed.

She registers Lionel calling her:   
“Root. Root. ROOT.” 

She’s dazed enough to ponder the fact that this is the first time she’s heard him call her Root. It’s usually ‘Cocopuffs’ or something creatively connotatively crazy.

“Glasses, when did her and Shaw…?”

She closes her eyes, muting the world round her, the static pulsing against her ear.

Her and Shaw.

She doesn’t feel blanketed by her usual strain of quirkiness right now. She feels raw and exposed.  
She would take Control’s torture over this any day. Let them take both her ability to hear. Take her sight. Her life. Take it all. She’d give it willingly. For Sameen.

Sameen

The name is an ache, in her head, in her heart. In every breath. In every beat of ongoing static.

“Miss Groves.” It’s Harold swimming into view.

How could this happen? How could She let this happen? Root doesn’t know if she means herself, Sameen or the Machine. They’re all responsible as far as she’s concerned.

Rage against the Machine.  
against herself.  
against…

She becomes aware of the elevator moving. Staring at the gates, blurred in front of her- unseeing, unhearing, unaware.

That… kiss.

The thought of which makes her eyes shut and a hoarse sob of anguish escape. The first sound that she’s made in minutes; hours; days. Who cares?

That kiss was the beginning and the end of everything.

She told Harold that the lives lost wouldn’t matter, in this war. Not for the greater good. Not when it was her own life and she was doing the sacrificing.

And a thought stops her cold:

“Did she sacrifice Sameen?”

The question is barely audible over the grinding of the elevator. She wants to rip the connection from her ear. Rage, RAGE against the machine; against Harold who created her; against Samaritan for ruining it all. Against Sameen for- “For God’s sake Harold, answer me. Did She know, did she choose to allow Sameen to-” She chokes.

Harold is staring at her aghast. To his credit he never stops applying pressure to where John is bleeding out beneath his usually capable hands. But this time he may not be able to fix John, or Root, any of them. His father didn’t equip him with skills to deal with this. At least he still knows that Grace is alive and happy in Italy. That John’s blood is still hot beneath his fingers, drumming with the beat of his heart.

“I don’t know Root.”

She’s sagging in Fusco’s arms. She doesn’t know if its for his benefit or hers. She know he had soft spot for Sameen. The answer is a poor balm to the red hot poker that is her grief right now.

“Was she apart of the strategy?”

“The Machine can conceive of millions of strategies in a single second, but to attempt to determine their outcomes as success or failure would be impossible, even for something as powerful as the Machine. We cannot know how many options She ran before She selected our course of action.”

Harold’s words provide her with no solace. She’s about to rip the Machines receiver component from where its imbedded behind her ear, when she hears the faintest traces of distorted voices segmented together: “She…is…alive. She. is. alive. sheisalive. SHE…isalIVE.” 

Red Klaxon’s screech, as the elevator halts plunged into darkness.

And Root can breath again.

**Author's Note:**

> I started watching POI in December, because of the Root x Shaw Tumblr posts.  
> I thought Carter's death was hard to swallow. (Nobody warned me.)  
> 4x11 was by far the most painful and wonderful experience.
> 
> Shaw better live.


End file.
